'Exergaming' Is A Great Way To Get Your Kids Exercising, Aussie Research Shows

Researchers from the University of Western Australia, in conjunction with the Australian Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, rounded up 15 children aged 9 to 11 and put them through a series of exercise sessions to gauge the effectiveness of "High intensity Exergaming" (HiE) and "Low intensity Exergaming" (LoE), compared to more traditional cardiovascular exercise.

According to the research paper, published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Pediatrics, "traditional" meant running on a treadmill, alternating between two-minute exercise periods and one minute of rest. The children remained on the treadmill until "volitional exhaustion", with the speed gradually upped in 1km/h increments from an initial 4km/h.

If you're not familiar with the term "exergaming", it refers to a form of exercise that involves the use of video games.

For the exergaming sessions, researchers fired up Kinect Sports, using the 200m hurdles to simulate high-intensity and ten-pin bowling for low-intensity. Each game mode was played for a 15-minute period, which the paper states is the recommended time "speciﬁed by game manufacturers". It's mentioned that the children recruited did not own the game, in order to eliminate the influence of a training effect.

The results of the tests showed that the 200m hurdles could be legitimately classified as exercise of "moderate intensity", while the ten-pin weighed in as "low intensity". The paper concludes by saying that the results provide a "sound physiological rationale for inclusion of intensive exergames as a form of PA [physical activity] to potentially improve cardiovascular health in children".

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Comments

I'm obese.
As a child, I hated sports - because I was no good. Negative reinforcement began.
Most of my sports instructors were focused on creating teams that could win at inter-school sports events. Exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle? Foreign concept.
The thing is: video games aimed at children are relatively easy to win - provided you are reasonably coordinated. Even mild physical impairment could easily affect the outcome, and the attitude of the children. Only those who win will want to play long enough to get a "valid" workout.